Altris: EIC Accelerator Bet on Sodium-Ion Battery Cathodes

Lithium-ion batteries depend entirely on lithium, cobalt and nickel from outside the EU, according to the EU project summary Altris wrote for its grant. Altris AB, a 2017 spin-out of the Ångström Laboratory at Uppsala University, makes a cathode for sodium-ion batteries that uses none of the three. Its material, sold as Fennac, is what the CORDIS project summary calls a highly sodiated Prussian Blue Analogue, made from sodium cyanide, iron sulfate, sodium hydroxide and sulfuric acid.

The EIC Accelerator selected Altris at its October 2025 cut-off for blended finance. The company announced on 19 February 2026 a €2.5 million grant and a potential equity investment of up to €10 million from the EIC Fund. CORDIS records a grant agreement for the project, NASCALE, signed on 29 May 2026, with an EU contribution of €2,499,999 from 1 June 2026 to 31 May 2028. Five months into that period, the record is one of shrinking industrial plans, new partners and a large loss.

A cathode made from pigment chemistry

Prussian White is a sodium-rich form of Prussian Blue. Silicon Canals and eeNews Europe describe Fennac as a powder made from abundant, low-cost materials without cobalt, nickel or copper. The Northvolt announcement of November 2023 describes its cell as built from abundant materials such as iron and sodium, pairing the Prussian White cathode with a hard carbon anode, giving a cell with no lithium, nickel, cobalt or graphite.

The NASCALE summary on CORDIS claims four advantages: raw materials fully available in Europe, a simple low-temperature production process with low operating and capital costs, a cathode footprint of 4 kg of CO2 per kWh, and suitability for power density and low-temperature use. The comparison figure after the CO2 claim is cut off in the CORDIS text. Altris's website lists two cell designs built on the material: a P-Series at 110 to 130 Wh/kg and an E-Series above 160 Wh/kg with more than 8,000 cycles. These are the company's figures; no independent test of them was found.

The partner that went bankrupt

Altris's first route to market ran through Northvolt. Northvolt invested in the Series A of March 2022, a round of €9.6 million (SEK 100 million) with Molindo Energy and EIT InnoEnergy that was meant to scale Fennac output to 2,000 tonnes a year, enough for 1 GWh of batteries, as Silicon Canals also reported. In November 2023 Northvolt announced a sodium-ion cell validated at more than 160 Wh/kg, co-developed with Altris, aimed first at energy storage systems; pv magazine reported the same figure.

In October 2024 EFN reported that Northvolt was a major shareholder of Altris and that their joint development project was ending, with Northvolt meant to become a customer for cathode material. Bergquist, then chief financial officer and acting chief executive, told EFN that Northvolt's situation had not affected Altris's development work. The same month Altris closed the first tranche of a SEK 150 million Series B1 with new investors Clarios and Maersk Growth, ESS News reported. Northvolt AB filed for bankruptcy in Stockholm on 12 March 2025, as Battery-News also reported. What happened to Northvolt's shareholding in Altris, or to any supply arrangement, is not public.

From Sandviken to Kolín

In May 2022 Uppsala University reported that Altris had agreed with Sandvik Materials Technology to open a plant called Ferrum in Sandviken, with an annual capacity of 2,000 tonnes of Fennac, about 1 GWh of sodium batteries a year. In November 2025, announcing SEK 80.75 million (about €7.3 million) from existing investors, InnoEnergy wrote that Altris would discontinue its planned pilot production in Sandviken and consolidate operations in Uppsala, shifting its focus to commercial partnerships; the EIT published the same account. No company statement giving a reason for dropping Sandviken was found.

Two months later the industrial plan reappeared in a different form. On 15 January 2026 Altris and the Czech chemicals group Draslovka announced that Draslovka would make a €19.3 million in-kind investment in Altris and convert an existing line at its site in Kolín to produce Altris's cathode, with up to 350 tonnes a year once ramped up, which the partners equate to about 175 MWh of cells, and production planned for late in the third quarter or early in the fourth quarter of 2026, per Renewable Energy Magazine and InnoEnergy. No announcement that production in Kolín has started was found by 4 November 2026; the latest Altris release, of 14 September 2026, does not mention the site.

Clarios, InoBat and a cold-start test

The same January 2026 announcement, as InnoEnergy summarised it, described an expanded partnership with Clarios, the low-voltage battery maker and an Altris shareholder, under a joint development agreement for automotive use, with an increased equity investment whose amount was not disclosed, and with the Slovak cell maker InoBat assembling and testing prototype cells. On 14 September 2026 Altris announced that validation with customers in automotive, heavy-duty, off-highway, commercial vehicle and intralogistics applications had confirmed cold-start performance down to minus 40°C, and that the partners intend to move towards pilot-scale and small-series production; ChemXplore carried the same claims. The customers are not named, and no test protocol or data has been published.

Altris's website shows the logos of Clarios, Volvo Cars, Draslovka, SENEC, Maersk and Stora Enso under the heading "Validated by Industry Leaders" without saying what each relationship involves. Stora Enso's role is documented: ESS News reported a June 2024 partnership to adapt Stora Enso's Lignode hard carbon as an anode. No supply contract with a named buyer of cathode material has been announced.

Money in, revenue down

Swedish company databases that republish the filed accounts list revenue of SEK 18.2 million for 2025 and a loss after financial items of SEK 105.3 million, per Allabolag and Ratsit; Allabolag lists an EBITDA loss of SEK 71.2 million. Ratsit records revenue down 46% on the previous year, and Allabolag and Bolagsfakta list 55 employees. The full annual report was not obtained for this article, so equity and cash at year end are not given here.

The new money of late 2025 and 2026 has come from existing shareholders and a partner. The SEK 80.75 million of November 2025 came from investors including InnoEnergy, and Draslovka's €19.3 million is an investment in kind, not cash. The EIC Fund's list of invested companies, which showed 319 organisations on 4 November 2026, does not include Altris, so the "up to €10 million" of equity remains a potential investment in the public record.

What NASCALE promised, and what can be checked

The CORDIS summary sets out a goal, scaling up production of Fennac for a European value chain, rather than numbered milestones: it gives no tonnage, no production date and no customer target. The company's own February 2026 release lists four uses for the money: industrialising cathode production, scaling European manufacturing, validation with strategic industrial partners and commercial deployment in targeted segments. CORDIS shows no total project cost and no periodic report, which is normal for a project that started in June 2026.

1. Industrialise cathode productionNot yet shownKolín line planned for late 2026; no start of production announced by 4 November 2026.
2. Scale European manufacturingMoved to a partnerSandviken pilot dropped in November 2025; capacity now planned at Draslovka in Kolín, up to 350 tonnes a year.
3. Validation with industrial partnersCompany-reportedCold start to minus 40°C reported with Clarios and InoBat, 14 September 2026; customers and data not published.
4. Commercial deploymentNot shownNo supply contract with a named buyer announced.

Why the EU funds it

The NASCALE summary frames the project around Europe's dependence on lithium, cobalt and nickel from outside the EU and on a supply chain built from raw materials available in Europe. Altris is not new to EU funding: CORDIS lists it as a partner in SIMBA, a Horizon 2020 sodium-ion project coordinated by the Technical University of Darmstadt from January 2021 to June 2024, with an EU contribution of €483,662.50 for Altris. A CORDIS text search for "Altris" on 4 November 2026 found NASCALE and SIMBA and no other Altris project. A cathode made from raw materials available in Europe fits that policy goal; the grant runs until May 2028.

Altris was not asked for comment for this article. The reporting is based on publicly available sources, listed below.